I TURNED 49 last Sunday which is not a mean feat in a country whose life expectancy has plummeted to around 35, if not lower.
The Last Straw with Lenox Lizwi Mhlanga
I look forward to clocking half a century next June by which time I hope things would have been straightened out. Forgive me for being optimistic. As Zimbabweans, we have no choice but go up, because we have scrapped the bottom.
I was born in a year when the country experienced record lows — this time in temperatures, not the economy. This winter is somewhere near there and being a June baby I have more or less been able to handle the cold. But this winter is particularly bitter in more ways than one. Before I get there, let me just pick a number of milestones in my very active lifetime.
When I came into the world we were part of what was known as the federation. This country (Southern Rhodesia) had the lion’s share of development when compared to the then Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi).
This was mainly because of the large white population. This led to massive labour migrations from our northern cousins who even at that time were taken as second-class citizens. In my childhood, having been born with a silver spoon dangling from my mouth, I was terrorised by a child of what was known then as Munyasarandi or Munyasa for short. But I was oblivious of the political upheavals of the time which to us manifested in the form of occasional riots and patrols by burly white policemen we called amajoni.
My father, who grew up and was educated in South Africa, threw himself headlong into the nationalist politics of the day. He had a lot to gain and to lose too. He had just started a family and had a well paying job as a furniture salesman. This was at a time when anything to do with business was the white man’s domain.
In fact, he had been appointed manager of the shop his Jewish employers had opened in Bulawayo, but was not allowed to take up this plum position because, you guessed it, he was black. However, his employers, realising a niche market for furniture among the growing black middle class of nurses and teachers, opened another branch along Lobengula Street where my father was designated “saleman” even though his position was actually manager of both branches.
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
Keep Reading
It was at this branch of Mackays furniture shop that the likes of the late Joshua Nkomo, Sidney Malunga, Joseph Msika, John Nkomo, Lazarus Dlakama, and others would meet and strategise.
It was the late Malunga who was to tell me years later that it was my father who sold him his first bed. The late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo was to confirm this for a fact. My father’s contribution did not end in supplying beds, radios and televisions to a modernised clientelé who were later to be the who’s who of Zimbabwean politics.
He pioneered what today is misnamed indigenisation. He was among the first crop of blacks to start their own businesses.
This might sound like the story of the life of my father, but somewhere in between those pages that made this country’s history was a bemused me taking life as easy as any middle class kid of the time. Oblivious of the danger that my father’s involvement in nationalist politics would bring to the family, we enjoyed the status of abantwana bezipantsha — literally the children who grew up in comfort.
Unfortunately, little of my father’s entrepreneurial spirit rubbed off me at the time. Instead, he cultivated in me a voracious appetite for reading. I vividly remember sharing the newspaper with him every morning from the time I was in Grade One.
At that time my interest was in cartoons and comic strips that dominated the editorial page of the Chronicle of those years. I blossomed into an artist of note at Masuku Primary School in Tshabalala and I was roped in by my teachers to draw illustrations for the radio lessons conducted by the immortal Ms Childs.
My father was to later involve himself with football right from the 1960s, serving Highlanders Football Club in various capacities right up to the honorary presidency of the team, a post he holds today. For me this meant that I had the privilege to brag to my friends not only about having watched Tshilamoya destroy Gwelo United, but that players such as Billy Sibanda, Lawrence “Lofty” Phiri, Edward Dzowa, Tommy “Squeezer” Masuku, Isaac Mafaro, Peter Zimuto actually slept at our Mhlahlandlela bungalow during camp.
The family business grew under the J Temba brand and yet the war took its toll. The guerillas would benefit from his generosity in Lower Gweru via the bottle store at Maboleni. Yet ironically, my father was to be detained in post-independent Zimbabwe, the country he helped liberate. This would bear seed to the bitterness against politicians he had harboured for all those years and has rubbed on me somehow. Next week we continue the saga . . .
Lenox Mhlanga is a social commentator
